Figuratively Speaking GIVEAWAY!

Hi there!   Greetings from Deb in snowy and cold Iowa!   Huh?!  You may be wondering, Deb?! Where’s Kathleen?!  Well, Kathleen can be found over at my blog – Crafting Connections.  We decided we needed a little “excitement” these early days of January, so we decided to swap blogs!  We thought our readers might enjoy getting to meet another upper elementary teacher-blogger in the process. So, stick around and read on… (We’ll make it worth your while in the end!)

First, let me tell you just a little bit about myself.   Personally, I am married to my best friend, and I am the mother to two beautiful little girls- Kayla is nine years old and Brooke is six.

When I have free time, I like to hike (although I don’t get to do so very often…. my side of Iowa is a little on the flat side) and bake.   Here’s a photo of the birthday cake for Jesus that my girls and I made.  I made the cake, and my girls decorated it.  :)

Professionally, I am an ESL teacher in a school district in northeast Nebraska, and I am in the middle of my 16th year of teaching.   For the most part, I co-teach with several third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers.   I love this, as it allows me to provide support to many students and collaborate with some amazing teachers at multiple grade levels as well!  If you’ve visited my blog or been by my store, you’ll know that I LOVE to create “craftivity” resources… and the only thing better than creating them is seeing first-hand how students are engaged by them, enjoy them, and learn from them.  (Check out a post I wrote earlier this year about the benefits I find from doing craftivities with upper elementary students.)

Besides craftivities, I also really enjoy creating PowerPoint lessons.   Where craftivities employ hands-on, tactile learning opportunities, PowerPoint lessons employ important cognitive learning opportunities.  I have a hunch you’ll agree that both strategies have their place in our upper elementary classrooms.   I’ve found that a visually engaging PowerPoint filled with lots of examples is a powerful tool!  I have seen the light bulb come on for students SO many times when I present a visually engaging PowerPoint … and especially when I then follow it up with a hands-on craftivity to “seal in” what students have just learned cognitively.  Ahhh… I live to see that “AHA!” moment!

So, let me go back to Kathleen briefly.  A few weeks ago, I decided that my Figurative Language PowerPoint needed a “facelift”, shall we say – I think my “design skills” have improved a bit over the last year - and while I felt it had great “bones”, I thought it would benefit from a few design tweaks. (I’m really proud of how it turned out!)

Once I finished it, I decided to go on a TpT hunt for a great set of figurative language posters – that’s where I found Kathleen’s set (right).  I decided to connect with her to see if she wanted to team up to do a giveaway of my Figurative Language PowerPoint and her Figurative Language Poster set!  Suffice it to say that she was on board… and here we are today!  (She was actually just finishing up a Figurative Language Interactive Notebook resource, and I think that’s what she’s choosing to blog about over at my blog today…)

Anyway, I love the weeks when we focus on figurative language. I think it’s probably my favorite ELA topic to teach!  There are just so many fun things to do, and it’s SO fun to hear statements like, “Mrs. Hanson, check out the personification I found when I was reading yesterday!” when I walk into the classroom!   I thought I would briefly share how my co-teachers and I intend to go about teaching figurative language this year in 5th grade.

• We will start by presenting the Figurative Language PowerPoint - we want to start with a brief overview of the seven literary devices we will be covering in fifth grade.
• Similes
• Metaphors
• Alliteration
• Onomatopoeias
• Personification
• Hyperboles
• Idioms
• We will go through each literary device independently, using Kathleen’s Figurative Language Interactive Notebook activities as guided practice during class and some of my worksheets as independent practice.  We will also hang Kathleen’s Figurative Language Posters on the wall as we introduce each literary device.
• Students will record literary devices that they find during independent reading in my Figurative Language Flipbook.
• We will play lots of games to review previous literary devices taught as we progress through the unit!  For example, after we have covered similes and metaphors, the next day we will probably play “I have… Who has…? : Similes and Metaphors” at the beginning of the class period before we begin teaching alliteration.
• After all of the literary devices have been introduced, we will do some review activities, including my Figurative Language Task Cards and Figurative Language Craftivity.
• We will assess at the end of the unit by using the review activity in Kathleen’s Figurative Language Interactive Notebook packet. 

Between Kathleen’s two resources and the resources I had already made (and are in my bundle), we determined that we would not even be able to use all of the materials we have!!  However, I suppose that is okay- we even decided that we might be able to use some of the materials for reteaching and/or a review before those spring standardized tests.

I promised a raffle giveaway in the blog title... here it is!   One winner will receive my Figurative Language BUNDLE - AND the resource that Kathleen is featuring over at my blog... Enter at either blog!





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Finally, thank you so much for reading today - even though I'm not Kathleen. :)   I hope my post today will lead you to consider following my blog as well!